Quote:
Originally Posted by
signal1 
It's one thing to expect your guy to win. But this time a lot of the right (and a lot of folks right here) went all in on the distressingly frequent Republican separate reality thing, loudly declaring that the polls were rigged, the media was in the bag, Silver was a crypto-gay con man and Romney was going to kick ass.
And I wish that now that we know that the polls were pretty much dead on, maybe there could be a little reflection on the efficacy of simply denying anything that doesn't flatter your sensibilities. And perhaps how that actually points to the larger problem the Republican party is facing and will face, in increasingly dire measure, in the years to come, unless they change it up. But it doesn't look very likely.
I think what happened is that the political leaders on the right as well as the right-wing pundits live in a very insulated world. The ones we see on TV are rich, part of an elite group, male dominated (in spite of the female pundits on Fox) and they only talk to each other. So when everyone you know feels the same way you extrapolate that to the whole country and thereby completely misinterpret what's going on. That's why the polls seemed wrong to them.
I think people in New York City make the same mistake. (Nothing against NYC, I live here). NYC did relatively well during the recent and past recessions because the economy here is so diverse, even with the big Wall Street and bank layoffs after the financial crash. So we don't see the suffering in the rest of the country as much as others do and we wonder what all the fuss is about. We don't see shuttered office buildings (except now, because of the floods) or lots of empty retail. While there are many poor people in NYC, we also see former ghettos being increasingly gentrified and property values rising.
The problem with the newscasters and pundits getting it wrong is that they let their desire to see Romney elected get in the way of the facts. Because the math of the election was incredibly obvious (see below). But the even bigger problem is their perception of what happened. I have heard repeatedly on Fox something to the effect of "half the country, including most minorities are takers, not makers, and those are the people who voted for Obama".
I resent that comment and I also think it's racist (aside from being incredibly dumb). In their world, if you voted for Obama, you're a taker and want the Government to supply you with things that you don't deserve at a cost to other taxpayers. And most of those takers are non-white ethnic groups. They still don't get it and until they do get it, they're not going to win any national elections.
One of their problems is that what you need to do to win a local House election, where districts are so gerrymandered that you can appeal to one group and win, is far different than what you need to do to win a national election with a diverse populace. The other problem is that you have to be far more conservative to win the primary than the national election, but if you do that, as Romney did, it makes you appear to be a flip-flopper (although Romney was obviously less conservative than the Michelle Bachmanns of the world).
Personally, I thought Mitt Romney conceded the election when he made that comment about how 47% of Americans would vote for Obama no matter what. Because if that were true, then Mitt would have to win 95% of the 53% in order to win and that was going to be impossible for anyone of any party. If I were at that fundraiser event, I would have walked out without contributing because it would have been obvious to me that Romney couldn't win.
Also, if you analyzed state-by-state, which I did here pages back, it was very obvious that Obama would win because aside from Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia and Iowa, Obama had 257 and only needed 13 to win. So even giving Florida to Romney, the only way Obama could have lost was if he had lost Ohio, Virginia and either Iowa or Colorado and that was never going to happen - he was never going to lose three out of those four states. Nate Silver got it right because he did the math. I got it right because I did the math.
The Republicans lost for one simple reason: they alienated just about everyone except angry, older white guys. (Except I'm an older white guy and they even alienated me. And I'm angry, but it's the Republicans who make me angry.) Romney alienated (some people will be in more than one group):
- 47% of the country for obvious reasons
- anyone who doesn't consider a minority to not be a real American
- women who don't want the Government controlling their bodies.
- women who don't feel that rape is "God's gift"
- public union workers, such as police, firefighters and teachers
- anyone collecting social security or Medicare
- anyone who is getting paid so little that they don't pay Federal income taxes
- those who feel that rich people should pay taxes at the levels they paid under Nixon or Reagan.
- those who feel that it's unfair that capital gains tax is 14%, but a middle class worker might be paying 23% on their salary.
- anyone who believes in man-made global warming
- anyone who believes in Darwin and evolution (and most Science)
- anyone who believes in fact checking
- dog lovers
It doesn't matter whether people who believe the above things have it right or wrong. What matters is that if you alienate all of the above, there's not a lot of voters left. Considering all that, Romney actually did quite well...half the country voted for him.
But if the Republicans couldn't win against Obama in this tough economy, how are they going to win against another Democrat, especially a white one, if the economy improves? If the Republicans want to win future elections, they have to be more inclusive and less insulated and they can't be listening to Tea Party extremists or even conservative Christians who want to impose their religious view on the entire country. Purity doesn't work if you lose every election because of it. The Republicans should have learned that in 1964 from Barry Goldwater and the country was a lot less diverse then.
